backyardmissionary

When this year started my life was ambling along and I was looking for things to do most days. I was almost glad of my two days of teaching just to help fill up a fairly empty week!
Its now August and that has changed a heap. Today and yesterday have been sensational days and I […]

As much as we may want to take a more holistic approach to defining / describing the gospel and make it about much more than ‘heaven or hell’ sooner or later we need to discuss issues of sin, forgiveness and atonement.
In some of the pendulum swinging that I have observed in the last few years […]

I’ve been reading a few new blogs again lately…
Its always good to discover local people who have stuff to say that is worth hearing.
One is Jules Birt, who was at our last Forge intensive. Jules is great guy and has been writing some really good stuff. It looks like he and a few of […]

‘Counter-cultural’
Tonight we start our time in the sermon on the mount (Matt5-7) and we look at all that crazy stuff Jesus had to say. It really is quite over the top… The theme seems to be very much aorund that of counter-cultural discipleship - challenging the way we see the world working as we follow […]

Yesterday, after 14 years of being a Baptist pastor I attended my first ever ‘assembly’ meeting. Assemblies are where the churches all across the state come together to discuss issues and vote on stuff.
I was hoping to keep my dismal record intact, and possibly never attend a single meeting, but yesterday did actually kindle […]

While I’m thinking out loud here’s another one…
Church - how important is it that we have everyone in one place at one time?
Why do I ask?
Well, looking around my neighbourhood it seems like to make that happen is going to be tricky. The core issues are:
shift work - some people cannot meet at the same […]

How important is reading the Bible to a person’s discipleship?
Recently I seem to be hitting a fair slab of people who tell me they haven’t picked up the Bible in ages. Everything evangelical in me reacts to that fairly strongly as a problem, but is it really a problem?…
It seems to be almost a trend […]

The good news is” we’re not pregnant!
That might sound a bit odd, but if you’ve been following this blog for the last month you’d know why its good news.
There are 5 embryos left now.
A maximum of 7 little hamos”

The last few days have been incredibly windy over here with 7 metre swells and all sorts of wild weather happening.
Today I am back at school.
When you are a Phys Ed teacher the worst scenario you can face is when it is windy - wind seems to drive kids crazy.
But… make it cold AND windy […]

Over the last 5 months I have been doing some coaching with a great guy from the Seventh Day Adventist churches.
He discovered some stuff I had written, we had a coffee and he asked me to do some coaching with him because he was feeling the desire to explore new expressions of church and mission.
We […]

We are still on the journey of figuring out a rhythm that works for us as a team when it comes to meeting and spending time together.
Recently we agreed to continue with weekly meetings - but move them to Monday nights and start at 7.00pm so we could engage with the kids to some […]

Our first year in Brighton is almost up, which means we lose our free broadband - now we have to pay for it.
So… I am trying to figure out the best way to go.
We have a cable connection, but our current ISP has been pretty disappointing with regard to download speed. They call is 256 […]

Sounds like it won’t be long before Forge gets up and flying in N.Z.
There are some great people over there willing to make it happen so hopefully the kiwis will enjoy the same quality of missionary training we have had here in Oz.
At the Melb forge intensives there are always a a bundle of kiwis, […]

I think I have to agree that although ‘emerging church’ is getting tired as a way of defining new expressions of church - and although ‘missional’ means so many different things to different people, its the language we are stuck with…
So here’s some news on our first Aussie ‘emerging missional church’ gathering. It’ll be happening […]

Is it just me or is this already becoming a tired expression?
Even though we may recalibrate it as ‘emerging missional church’ I am feeling it is a phrase that is going going the way of ‘missional’ and ‘postmodern’. Everybodies using it everybody means something different.
I’m sure its being said” ‘If I hear that word/phrase […]

I have been thinking about coordinating a ‘Discovery Tour’ around the middle of next year, the idea being that we grab a few potential church planter/missionary types from over here and do a ‘tour’ of a range of new ‘churches’ on the eastern seaboard to observe what is happening and to learn from their leaders.
I […]

School is getting harder again.
I had been starting to enjoy it, but some different factors are combining now to make it increasingly difficult.
A simple issue is the very cold weather and the fact that we are outside doing netball and athletics. Most of the guys don’t get into these two sports - but the […]

I have just been for a late night run and am now sitting here watching a replay of the USA v Puerto Rico basketball game while I cool down.
I’m not one for ‘tall poppy syndrome’, but it is unbelievably sweet to see the Puerto Rican’s wipe the floor with the Americans!

Tomorrow I head to Melbourne for an overnight stay. I am on a national Baptist team called Crossover that is focused on evangelism and we meet four times to discuss strategies for ‘reaching Australia’. So far I am a little underwhelmed by the whole experience but I am hoping it will change in the future.
While […]

One of my jobs in the Forge network is to put together and distribute the national newsletter.
We haven’t had one so far so this will be the first effort. We’re keen to share the stories of missional communities around Oz as well as including articles, book reviews etc.
If you’d like a copy of it then […]